Unions are essential for the working class and have done much to advance its cause. Without them, workers would still be subject to the every whim and fancy of the employers and their foremen.
But unions, while indispensable in the struggle of the workers against capital, have limits as well. Left on their own, they have a tendency to restrict themselves to economic struggles and struggles for reforms, and to stay outside the revolutionary political struggle to abolish capitalism, the source of the workers’ misery.
Today, the labor aristocracy dominates the union movement, turning it away from the fight against the capitalists and collaborating with them instead. A movement to oppose this sell-out has developed, and the young communist movement is active within it.
This class-struggle trend aims at kicking out the union misleaders and winning over the mass of rank-and-file workers to revolutionary struggle.
The task of transforming the unions into class-struggle unions is a complex and difficult one. It must be taken up with determination and skill. But is is nevertheless only a part of the more general task of guiding the working class, and all those who suffer from capitalist exploitation and oppression, on the road to socialist revolution.
That is why communists, while paying special attention to the struggle for class unions, also recognize the necessity of a higher form of working-class organization – the communist party. Communists invite militant workers not only to fight for class unions, but to join their revolutionary political party, the Workers Communist Party, as well.
The communist party, in turn, can sum up the experience of its militants in many different unions across the country and provide an orientation for the workers’ fight against the capitalist system and the capitalists’ agents within the union movement itself.
Without the leadership of a communist party, the movement for class unions will be divided and weak. With the guidance of such a party, workers can drive back the sold-out union leadership and finally kick them out.
Thus, through the cooperation of communists and militant workers, the unions can be set on a firm course of defending the immediate interests of the workers and fighting for their final emancipation as well.